To paraphrase Congressman Duncan Hunter, these terrorists are not analogous to criminals in our civil justice system here in the U.S. They have explicitly declared war against the United States and as such have waived any benefits of our system of justice and equality. Why should they get any constitutional rights? I understand the desire for America to not cross that moral line that would equate us with our enemy counterparts, but confirmed terrorists really deserve habeas corpus?

A recent poll, given on ABC news, has shown that 53% of Americans favor secret prisons and trials where normal U.S legislative procedures do not apply. They do not support torture (and neither does the president by the way), but they fear another terrorist attack more. His “rewriting” of the law, as you put it, was simply a clarification of the law. Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions was so indescribably vague, that it literally put our intelligence officers in danger of being brought up on tribunal for EVERYTHING they did in an attempt to gather information.

Enemy combatants captured during war time never had, until a couple of months ago, any constitutional rights, and that’s not just my opinion. A court case, JOHNSON v. EISENTRAGER, 339 U.S. 763 (1950), provided the precedence for future war time situations. I’ll leave out the reason for the trial, as it is lengthy, but here are just a few of the case’s resolutions:

1. A nonresident enemy alien has no access to our courts in wartime. Pp. 768-777.

2. Executive power over enemy aliens, undelayed and unhampered by litigation, has been deemed, throughout our history, essential to wartime security. P. 774.

3. A nonresident enemy alien, especially one who has remained in the service of the enemy, does not have even this qualified access to our courts. P. 776.

4. These nonresident enemy aliens, captured and imprisoned abroad, have no right to a writ of habeas corpus in a court of the United States.

5. The Constitution does not confer a right of personal security or an immunity from military trial and punishment upon an alien enemy engaged in the hostile service of a government at war with the United States. Pp. 781-785.

(a) The term “any person” in the Fifth Amendment does not extend its protection to alien enemies everywhere in the world engaged in hostilities against us. Pp. 782-783.

That’s not my opinion, that comes straight from the Supreme Court. www.law.uchicago.edu/tribunals/docs/jve.pdf

If we are not allowed to aggresivle gather intelligence from our sworn enemies, how are we to prevent another attack from occuring? No seriously, I’m asking you, what would you do to ensure that America is not attacked again? Would you pull out of Iraq, claiming that it’s not a central point in the war on terror? Lead terrorists say it is. What methods would you use to gather intelligence, or would you use any methods at all? Would you free suspected detainees if they promised not to return to violence? They tried that at Gitmo, but all 7 detainees that were freed returned to terrorism, according to CBS news (www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/24/terror/main645493.shtml ). So tell me, is security important to you? If so, how would you go about it?

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